Index Engines intelligently migrates data of value from legacy tapes to the cloud without the need for the original backup software. This enables critical business records and intellectual property to be identified and migrated directly from tape to AWS so it can be leveraged by those who need it and managed according to corporate polices.

When disaster recovery tapes are retired from their initial use case they become an assumptive archive of all the organizations data. This content has hidden value and potential risk. Often referred to as “dark data” it is difficult to find, restore and use. It is typically not leveraged by knowledge workers and these tape archives contain sensitive content that must be managed by legal and regulatory professionals to support legal discovery requests and data privacy regulations.

Index Engines makes it viable for organizations with large tape stockpiles to go tapeless and migrate the data of value to AWS using an automated, cost-effective approach. Index Engines’ patented software platform makes easy work of securing and managing legacy data in the cloud without the need for the original backup software.

Technical Overview

Index Engines simplifies migration of data from legacy backup tapes to Amazons Simple Storage Service (S3). A culled data set, or single instance of the tape contents, is migrated ensuring all metadata remains forensically sound.

The native deduped data, including unstructured files, email and databases, is stored in AWS. A metadata or full content index is available to search, manage based on retention policies, and access so data can be quickly retrieved based on business needs.

TCO Analysis: Key Performance Indicators

Legacy backup tapes require infrastructure and resources that quickly add significate expense to corporate IT budgets. Maintaining an environment that ensures access to data in support of legal and regulatory requirements is expensive. Here are the key expenses associated with managing a legacy tape footprint:

Hardware: Media servers, including NDMP servers if utilized, tape libraries, etc. Much of this content is aged and under expensive maintenance and support contracts.

Software: Legacy backup software required to restore data as needed. The ongoing maintenance, support and manpower required to run this environment is expensive.

Data center: the floor space, cooling, electricity to run the legacy environment is a hidden expense. Additionally as floor space is tight, this space can not be reallocated.

SLAs and Restores: Even with legacy backup software, the time to find relevant tapes, retrieve them and restore the content is lengthy and expensive if third party specialists are utilized.

Offsite Tape Storage: Managing and storing tapes in offsite vaults is an ongoing line item that grows each month.

Tape Purchases: Tapes are shipped offsite and not recycled, resulting in monthly acquisition of new tapes to support disaster recovery.

Risk and Liability: The hidden dark data that is not managed according to corporate governance polices, contains data that may result in risk and liability to the organization

When all the expenses above are reviewed and aggregated, it is clear that organizations that utilize tape as an archive are spending significant budget and resources. To see a sample 3-year TCO or learn how your TCO can be analyzed, contact us.

What can I search?Search can be on metadata, mailboxes, or full text content depending on the level of indexing that is purchased.

Do you support disk based backups?Yes. Index Engines supports both tape and disk-based backups.

What types of files can be restored?Any files existing within the backup image can be restored.

Do you need the original backup software?No, it is not used for restoration and is not required for management and access to backup data.

What are the hardware requirements?Index Engines software requires a server connected to a tape library for access to the backup images.

How long does it take to migrate data from tape?This is dependent on the tape type (DLT vs LTO), type of data on tape, and the utilization of the tape. A custom project plan can be defined via an Index Engines consultant.

Can you index and restore from encrypted tapes?Yes, depending upon the manner in which the data was encrypted and how the keys are managed.

Will this migrate all backup data?Backup data is highly redundant and often has no long-term retention value. Index Engines allows for filtering and culling of the content before it moves from tape. This accelerates the process as only what has value is restored.

Where does the native data reside?Once native content is restored it resides in Index Engines searchable repository where retention polices can be applied. Native files can also be extracted to disk for ingestion into existing corporate archives.

Pricing

Index Engines provides a Legacy Data Migration Assurance Program to help facilitate the process. All processing occurs within the client’s secure data center, and Index Engines remotely installs the software, processes the tapes and migrates data of value to the cloud. The client needs to provide the server and tape libraries. This solution is priced on a per tape basis designed for easy deployment